The Cox’s Bazar oriented tourism scenario has much changed in the last one and half decade. The place along with St. Martins was used to deal with a crowd that was considerably seasonal. But now, it can be merely stated that there’s no specific season in there. We have official weekends of two days. But whenever this is extended with a day or two, it becomes tricky for Cox’s Bazar hotel managers and officials to take a break in the rush of incoming phone calls for room reservation. Occasions of two Eid days and Durga Puja also send a huge crowd to hit Cox’s Bazar and St. Martins.

People’s mentality over tourism has changed. Affordable families of a tour now no more like to pass the leave of four days at a row at home. Their preference is Cox’s Bazar and St. Martin. This change of people’s mentality has urged the situation for Cox’s Bazar to become what now it is. But the stance of the government and its change has not been clearly visible.

To elaborate on possible governmental efforts over Cox’s Bazar, we have to throw light distinctively. There are a lot of grounds which government has to take care of. First of all there is the security which is considerably impressive. The law & order management strategy constantly changes with the rush of crowd as we can recall the deployment of extra 6,000 troops by police in last October, when the town was nearly shattered by an estimated 2 million tourists in a week. Several high ranking officials of Police including the Inspector General himself paid their visits to look after the management and that is appreciable.

Still there are ‘but’s over governmental efforts. If we focus on the accommodation structure, we see that the timeline between 80s and the mid of 90s, the tourist accommodation of Cox’s Bazar was solely controlled by hotels and motels owned and governed by Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation (BPC). Privately built hotels were nothing to tell about. But after the time started to change, BPC was not the one to contend with that change. Rather BPC has lost control from some of their major institutions. We recall the Silver Spoon, Inc. takeover of Motel Probal in late 2002. A large area inside Motel Probal acquisitions has been fully utilized by Silver Spoon, Inc., where they had set bar-b-q cottages, punting facilities etc. Now private investments are always welcomed, but we also should ask BPC that why they couldn’t do what Silver Spoon, Inc. did. BPC however retook the Motel Probal in 2005, but they couldn’t urge the ground to be under their influence long lastingly. Presently the Cox’s Bazar tourism is nearly in its height and BPC should now think about the opportunity which they have gradually forgone.

What Cox’s Bazar and Saint Martin need is a full government patronage, especially over the beach management, intra city communication (both transportation and streets), tourism promotion that is marketing the spot and attracting more and more investors, Bangladeshi investors should be prioritized.

Cox’s Bazar doesn’t enjoy that much of governmental patronages, whatever that stands upon is mostly private investment and finance. Still it is world’s one of the notable tourist spots on the earth having pure aesthetic attractions. There are few rated beaches in this world, most of them in United States & Australia, one in Thailand, one in Malaysia and some others in Europe. Cox’s Bazar is not contained by that list. But the difference is made only by the lovers of Cox’s Bazar, whoever loves it, enjoys going there for more and more times and the attraction doesn’t fade. This is the specialty of Cox’s Bazar. In 2005 I met a guy in the Seagull beach, who was visiting Cox’s Bazar with his wife. He told me he has visited 6 of the world’s ranked beaches, those are in Australia, but Cox’s Bazar is the one most exclusive to him and he was visiting it for 13th time then.

About the unquestioned adoration of Cox’s Bazar lovers, it’s not like it is loved because it belongs to our country. It’s adored because of the atmosphere and the pure aesthetic attraction that has been told earlier. The Cox’s Bazar oriented tourism is now to be considered in a larger scale. Government tourism policies and BPC strategies of 90s were may be suitable for the then circumstance, but the situation has gone through a promotion. Cox’s Bazar and Saint Martins Island, which is now formidably occupying the top of the ‘World’s New Seven Wonders’ list, evaluation over them will be a confused, if they don’t get enough attention of the government.

This was the slightest of our luck that we evaded the deadly Tsunami. It’s surely an experience that we were playing with the incoming waves of Bay of Bengal at Cox’s Bazar, without knowing thousands of lives have been taken by the Tsunami. On 26 December, we felt the commotion that happened in the morning in Bangladeshi time. There was a quite shaky earth quake and when we got to the beach, we felt it was no more looking calm as the one in previous day. But we never guessed this was a tsunami. After the lunch when we left Cox’s Bazar, we were optimistic about the Bangladesh’s win against India in the cricket match in Dhaka. We were obsessed with that & still didn’t know what has happened. On our way to Chittagong, we started receiving consequent phone calls from Dhaka, asking whether we were harmed or not. Then we came to know what happened. We thanked the almighty. Shukr-al-Hamdulillah.

At the post Eid season, Cox’sbazar tourism hosts were ready to catch a blow of over 2 million tourists in a week as well as 11 thousand hotel-motel rooms were booked. This seemed to be a boom period due to a long holiday of Eid & Durga Puja. But the signal has worked against it for a little bit. I reached there at the dusk of October 15 and lost my count of incoming vehicles to Cox’sbazar carrying tourists. Hundreds & thousands of busses, microbuses, cars, jeeps etc. were just speeding towards to the Cox’sbazar town through the Hotel Motel zone in front of my hotel. Reputed resorts such as Hotel Seagull, Hotel Sea Crown, Prasad Paradise, Hotel Uni Resort, Hotel Sea Palace, Hotel Media International, Zia Guest Inn, Nitol Bay Resort, Hotel Laboni, Motel Shaibal, Motel Probal have been found to be in trouble after having a 100% guest occupancy. Reputed restaurants like Diamond, Dhansiri, Jhauban, Kashban have been found with awaited customers standing outside terraces. Even Niribili, which have been denoted as a place of cold food & poor service had outnumbered customers too. Food & service quality have been found a little better than my last experience in May of this year.Cox’sbazar Police has been reinforced with extra 6000 troops from Chittagong due to this boom season. President of Cox’sbazar Hotel Motel Owners’ Association Mr. Mansoor Uddin Ahmed & General Secretary Mr. Shahjahan Chowdhury had a press release denoting their preparations to deal with this season. 3 kilometers long beach from Laboni Point to the staring of Marine Drive has been covered under maintenance program to keep this place neat, clean & secured for tourists. RAB-7 had its 24 patrol units to ensure that no tourists get hackled by muggers or others.Well, this is good to see that Government cares about tourism at Cox’sbazar.

This has been my tenth visit to Cox’sbazar, ended on Saturday from the very next day of Eid–ul–Fitr. This was a total family tour of 22 people including my parents, aunts, uncles & of course cousins. This was my third one in 2007 and we have stayed in Hotel Uni Resort as usual. This was a great experience to be in Cox’sbazar during a 3rd degree Cyclone precautionary signal. We have seen a lot of boats anchored near the coastline & the crowd of sea loving tourists was usually found. Later we came to know that the crowd was less than expected as many have cancelled to come due to the signal.

This was a total new experience for me and my family to be in there when it seemed to be risky at least for tourists. Calls after calls at our cell phones were coming from our family & friends back in Dhaka. They were real anxious about the signal where as this disturbed sea made our tour memorable.

We also have been in Teknaf in the day (October 17) which started with heavy rain in Cox’sbazar. We have seen speedy flow of water in thin trails which were coming from fountains at hills due to heavy rain. We took an attempt to visit Enani beach but heavy rain started as we reached there & that made our microbuses to turn back to Cox’sbazar. That afternoon we have been in the hill top rest house of Roads & Highways Department called “Shagor Bilash”.

Cox’sbazar is signified as world’s longest sea beach. As well as this is one of most beautiful sea beaches on this earth. Yes, you may say that Australia, United States as well Malaysia have better beaches… but those have been well decorated by their governments. Those beaches remain under smart maintainance of the government. But the thing we call ‘natural beauty’, it can be found in Cox’sbazar. If the government comes serious about going through a total renovation & maintainance program for Cox’sbazar, this beach will be rated as the best.

Right now, accomodation & security in Cox’sbazar are praiseworthy. Transportion services also deserve good comments, some of them are expensive but they offer real luxury. But the food & resturants, its really depressing, I mean the money they (resturant owners) claim for their service as well as food, is not a good deal. Most of the resturants of nice environment are used to keep its customer waiting for long, on the other hand, resturants which have quick service, are not that neat & clean. Neatness in Beach is another important thing and this is totally up to tourists. They should keep it in mind.

Our bellies were about to be ruined by Niribili resturant at Kolatoli Road, Cox’sbazar.

We waited more than on hour after waiter took our order, we got bored and irritated. However, our meal came infront of us after a long time and do you know what we found? …served food was a day older. We just ran off our temper and rushed out of that ___(cenosred) ___ resturant.That day we changed our resturant and got fixed at Dhanshiri Resturant, Kolatoli Road. It was just beside our hotel Uni Resort.

We are suggesting to not go to Niribili Resturant untill we find it better and inform you about it.

Cox’sbazar… a town full of hotels, motels, resosrts and bla… bla… bla… . These buildings have been constructed for you, these hotels are here for you… and you just have to be there. John Denver says, “Thank god for I am a country boy!”, you are country boys or may be girls… visit Cox’sbazar…!

World’s longest beach is waiting to welcome you at Cox’sbazar. You can be in walking on this beach like this kid. Just try to feel Cox’sbazar by being there… it will be a great experiance to be at Cox’sbazar for atleast 3 days. Enjoy!

This photo is clicked from the Sadar Bridge of Bandarban. This is taken by Rashid Shahid Tamal (rashid0000@hotmail.com) around October 2004.

SURROUNDING COX’SBAZAR :: Bandarban is in the east of Cox’bazar. It takes about 90 minutes to reach Bandarban from Cox’sbazar through excellent hilly path. Visitors use personal or locally hired jeeps to reach Bandarban.